Suspended Disbelief
by freakin_hilarious

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

I didn´t vote in this challenge but would probably have given it a 6 or maybe a 7, I like this shot.

As for meeting the challenge, it obviously does but maybe not as obviously as you may think. The gap you created is prett small and I am sure at least a couple of voters didn´t really notice the gap or had to search for it, I would have reccomended you lose one or two chain links more or remove one that was flat on you so that the chain looked more like this instead of how it looks now.

I
O

O
I
O
I

That would just lead to the missing link being more visible, I think you get what I mean.

Lighting is pretty good, I know it´s not easy to take photos of silver objects on a black backround so well done. Composition is also pretty good and simple wich is also good for DPC. All in all I am surprised it didn´t do better in the challenge, think it deserves at least a 6+ score but I can also well understand why it didn´t score a top 10 placing since shot´s like this were done quite a bit in the challenge and if you compare this one to the red and yellow ribbon photos, those just look much more difficult and thought out than your entry.

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

Found the Missing Link
by jessie

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

Well I didn´t vote in this challenge but truthfully, I would probably been one of those people who gave you a 5. Means I neither find this photo bad or good. It´s just that it seems a bit an easy way out for you, sure, that sculpture looks like a chain link so it definately meets the challenge. It´s the photography of that statue I don´t find very interesting, I mean it´s far from bad but it´s just taken from such an ordinary view. I personally would have wanted to see an unusual angle, like taken from up close and below the statue to emphasize the size or have someone stand there in an Indiana Jones or Superman costume like they were on a mission to actually find this oversize chain link for the sake of the human race. I just think it blends in too much with the surroundings, this photo would be excellent as a documentary photograph of the statue but as an artistic photograph supposed to please me aesthetically, it isn´t really appealing to me.

In short, I mostly agree with hywind, e301 and surfdabbler´s comments of the ones you got while the photo was in the voting stages.

Everything about the technicals is pretty good though, I don´t get what js797 is talking about it not being in focus, I can´t see better than it´s in excellent focus and it´s well exposed, no pitch black shadows or blown highlights. Colors are a bit muted for my taste, I would have loved to see a bright blue sky instead of that dull blue color it´s got but that´s just my personal taste, I completely understand why you chose this color scheme in the photo. I am not fond of the halo along the top of the photo but it´s not terrible either, I just would have preferred no haloing along the buildings and treeline.

Like I said, not a bad photo at all but not great either :)

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

Encino Man 2: Missing The Links!
by 777STAN

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

Well I didn´t vote in this challenge but I would probably have given this a 5 or maybe a 4 depending on how I thought it stacked up in the challenge. I kindof think you met the challenge, I mean the model is I guess supposed to look like a caveman wich is what most people think of right away when you say missing link. However, that outfit is hardly convincing as a caveman, if you could have gotten your hands on some fur (fake or real) the costume would have been much more convincing and led you to a better score. I am not a golfer, have absolutely no insight or interest in the sport and first thing I thought when I saw the shot is what is that in his hand. I just saw a cane and not a golf club and I thought the golf bag was some sort of cape. It wasn´t till I read the other comments you got that I saw it was a golf club and a golf bag. The title didn´t help me either as I have no clue on who the Encino Man is or what "Missing The Links" stands for, I had to google that frase to know that links stands for golfing. That´s probably cause english is only my third language and I have never had the use for that word yet so at least I learned something from this picture :)

What I am trying to say is if I were voting, I would just have seen a guy with a cane in a goofy outfit and a cape and while I assume most native english people got it, maybe some like me who aren´t didn´t get it and voted lower.

Regarding the composition, I think that is the weakest part of the photograph. I do normally like slanted photos but in this one, the fence is just too prominent, it´s very much just eating up space and draws way way too much attention, it´s the first thing I see when looking at this photo. I would suggest you trying out other angles, go down lower or higher, take this in landscape instead of portrait orientation or whatever, maybe include that fence but not have it such a big part of the photo as the guy I assume was intended as the main subject.

Colors are not bad but a bit too cold WB wise for my taste, looks like you used the daylight setting when perhaps the shade or cloud setting would have left you with warmer and more pleasant tones. Regardless of what you used and what the conditions were, I still would have prefered a warmer WB than the one was used.

Also the shot is just a tad too flat contrast wise for my personal taste and could stand to be sharper, but that´s just me :)

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

The Connection
by robgregory

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

Well I didn´t vote in this challenge but if I had, I probably would have voted this a 3. Sorry but I got to be honest about such things when I am supposed to be giving a critique. Most of that is the very poor connection to the challenge theme, I just don´t see any connection to the theme "missing link" no matter how hard I look. I assume you mean they are connected through nature but how? By poking at a butterfly and flower? It´s just too much of a stretch for me and I think I usually have a pretty open mind about photos meeting the challenge.

Just look at the top 10 in this same challenge. All of them are unquestionably meeting the challenge head on, there is pretty much no way you can missunderstand these images unless you really try or come from a very different backround than the people who photographed them. Try to be more direct next time, like for instance going in really close and just having the butterfly between two different childrens fingers. Make sure that there would be no way people thought the hands belonged to the same person, maybe using makeup or dirt to make one hand darker than the other or use a grown up hand versus a childrens hand? I at least am not fond of the composition and if the main focus of the picture is supposed to be the fingers and butterfly, it´s just too little a part of this photo.

Regarding technical features of this photo, the exposure seems ok. I am not fond of the fact that the heads of the children are slightly out of focus, I would either want to see you use a smaller aperture to have everything in focus or the opposite, their heads more out of focus. Colors seem a bit too warm but that´s not bothering me much, if it was intentional I totally see why you used a warmer white balance.

Anyway hope I am not being too negative and welcome to DPC. Just try to keep things simpler next time and try to put yourself in the voters shoes and do something they might find interesting and make sure you really tackle the challenge head on instead of having such an ambigous tie to the challenge theme.

You seem to have the camera basics down so just try to be a little bit more inventive and put more effort into your next entry and you should be fine.

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

Now what?
by Scapeshots

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

I didn´t vote in this challenge but to be honest I wouldn´t have voted it very high, since I think it meets the challenge ok though I most likely would have been one of your 4 votes.

Most of that is the poor image quality, most noticeably the lighting. The lighting for the keyboard is not bad though but for the hands, it´s too strong, blowing out some of the fingers and DPC voters hate blown highlights. I don´t think the white backround helped in this instance, I personally would have liked this image better if you had a desk as the backround or something usually seen underneath a keyboard. Actually, the blown highlights might be a result of the tweaking of contrast/brightness. Trust me, stay away from those tools in photoshop, concentrate more on using levels and curves cause if you set strong settings on contrast/brightness you stand a good chance of blowing out highlights and shadows. I think there is a tutorial on DPC on how levels or curves work, if not just google it, there are hundreds of tutorials on how those tools work, I found several when I started out post processing and someone pointed them out to me.

Besides image quality, this idea is not bad but it´s kindof been done before here at DPC and that also hurt the score I am sure, there is nothing wrong with doing stuff people have done before you (I do it all the time) but try to put your own twist on the shot then or make it more visually interesting if you want to score really well here.

I think if I had taken this shot, I would have used a natural backround, like a desk and probably just used light from a window to light the shot, using tungsten lights often is too harsh and if you use window facing north, you get much smoother and more natural looking lighting.

Well can´t really think of anything else to say except welcome to DPC, I see this is your first entry and your second entry scored much better so way to go, keep at it :)

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

Mmm! Yum!
by Citadel

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

Well first of all, what a cute baby :) I am supposed to critique this but find it kindof hard as I personally don´t like it when people say negative things about pictures of my kids so I find it hard to say anything negative about photos of other peoples kids too.

Instead I´ll just point out a couple of things that I think would make this photo better. I do like that you shot it against the light but still would just have wanted you to concentrate on exposing for the face as it´s kindof underexposed and just not cared about the backround, just let that blow all out if neccesary to expose the face correctly. Also, I see you used daylight white balance, I think this would be much more pleasant if you upped the WB to about maybe 7000 kelvin (or even more, just play around with it for personal preference), that would take care of the bluish skintone cast and yield a lot more warmer and pleasant colors in the shot as a whole.

I like the shallow dof and sharpness in the shot, contrast is also good and I frankly can´t understand why this only just barely scored above a 5. Maybe people are getting fed up by baby pictures but not me so I don´t get it, think it´s a bit underrated. Backround bokeh is also good and again, that´s a very cute baby and he´s got a great expression :)

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

Fighting an American Revolution
by fenix247

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

First of all, I didn´t vote in the challenge but if I did, I probably would have give a 5 and moved on to the next image without commenting.

Why?

Well I don´t really know what to say about this image, I am not, have never and will never be an war enthusiast and since the total time I have spent in the US has been under a week I simply don´t understand what you guys find so romantic about the civil war. Please don´t take offense at me using the words "War Enthusiast", what I mean is I am not really against it, just I don´t understand it, just like I don´t understand women :) Having gotten that off my chest I will say no more about the content of the image.

First of all, I don´t understand the settings on the camera. Why iso 1600, f16 and 1/500 for this scene? To me iso 200, f8 and 1/250 would make much more sense and lead to much better image quality. I don´t know how familiar you are with these settings but using a lower ISO will lead do less noisy images. Sure that doesn´t matter in web resolution but if you want to use it for anything else, like print, lower iso is optimal. Secondly, regarding the aperture, this seems to me to have been shot at a wide focal length so if you wanted everything to be in focus, f16 is overkill since there is nothing that is close to you that really needs to be in focus, everything is far away. Thirdly using a 1/500 is not a bad idea but since nothing is moving very fast in this photo, 1/250 would have been more than enough to freeze the frame, unless you were aiming to freeze bullets in the frame and then 1/500 would have been way too slow.

Not everything is negative about it, I think it´s decently composed and the exposure is dead on, even if I don´t agree with how you set your camera to expose this photo. Colors and contrast are not bad but pesonally I would want to see more vivid colors, mostly i the cyan colored sky.

Hope this helped and hope I didn´t offend in any way.

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

My house burning down
by snaffles

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

I didn´t vote in the challenge but if I had, I would probably have voted this a 6. It´s very visually striking and you could have fooled me about it not being a doll size house, I did notice there was something that wasn´t right about the scale of the flames vs. the house but like I said, had you not written it in your comments section I would never have been sure. I do like the colors in this shot and that bush or tree silhouette in the backround really makes the shot work, without it the photo would have been too two dimensional so good placement of the model.

The whole shot is a bit too dark for my taste though, I wish you had taken it a bit earlier in the day but still during dusk to show the surroundings more, maybe that would have been worse but that´s the vibe I get from the photo, it needed to be a bit brighter.

Also, the photo seems a bit soft, I would have preferred it sharper, I noticed you use a 1/8th shutterspeed? That´s all good if you used a tripod, if you didn´t that would explain the slight blurry nature of the photo. I took the liberty of looking up your entry in "Heat" and this is miles better so you have really improved since last year, no doubt :)

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

And the forest turned to silver...
by Haneck

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

Well I didn´t vote in this challenge but if I had I probably would have given this a 6 since I think it´s above average in the challenge but still not a great photograph. I like the high key feel to it, the exposure the light got in this photograph. The soft colors also appeal to me.

However, I am not as fond of the composition. What mostly bothers me about it is all that space around the model. The space to her left is to my taste (although I would crop out that plant) but I would crop/frame a little bit off the top and almost all of the front, I would have cropped this shot to a more square size and cut off everything from almost just beneath her feet, leaving just a little bit of room there. I put my hands over the screen like that and it instantly appealed more to me personally.

To score better I think you would need to watch highlights better, DPC voters really tend to dislike blown highlights, I do not mind them in this photograph and I think they make it more dreamy but trust me, watching those highlights will seriously help you score.

I took a peek at your outtakes and nr 1 and 3 are really nice, don´t care as well for nr 2, the color is a bit too strong for my taste there.

All in all I think this shot is good, just needs a bit of a push and it would be great :)

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.

i drown
by ursula

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

First of all, congrats on the top 5 placement :) Is this a self portrait? Well not really all that much I can critique about this image, I think you hit the challenge head on and pretty much nailed it. To say anything, I don´t really care for the "Noise Ninja" or blurry look of the model but it´s not really bothering me at all since she´s underwater and it just kindof makes sense she´s sligthly blurry. You know me though, I usually want images tack sharp, hehehe :)

Other than that, top notch. I really like the color tones in the image, very fitting. Composition good as well as the lighting.

What to do to improve the score? Next time, throw yourself off the bridge :P Muahahahahaha!

Kind regards from Iceland, Lárus.